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Harlequin F.C.
Harlequins (officially Harlequin Football Club) is a professional rugby union club that plays in the Gallagher PREM , the top level of English rugby union. Their home ground is the Twickenham Stoop, located in Twickenham, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
The club, which was founded in 1866 as "Hampstead Football Club", split the following year with some of the membership forming Wasps RFC. Three years later Hampstead renamed itself Harlequins and became one of the founding members of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. For more than a hundred years, Harlequins had been one of the top UK teams during the amateur era and this continued with the introduction of professionalism in 1995. The club has been champions of England twice, winning the title in 2012 and most recently in 2021. They won the European Challenge Cup in 2001, 2004 and 2011, the joint most wins of any team in the competition, and the domestic cup in 1988, 1991 and 2013. It remains the only founding club member of the RFU to still be in the top flight of English rugby.
Harlequins has the largest social media following of any club in the Premiership, the 2nd largest of any club in Europe, after Stade Toulousain.
The current club captain is Alex Dombrandt and head coach is Jason Gilmore for the 2025–26 season.
The Hampstead Football Club was founded in 1866 and the first recorded game took place in 1867. A disagreement between Club Secretary William Titchener and William Alford in 1867 resulted in Alford leaving with half of the membership to form the club now known as Wasps. The club was renamed Harlequin Rugby Football Club in 1870, supposedly because the membership was no longer purely local and to retain the previously created "HFC" monogram mark. The word 'Harlequin' (Arlecchino, a comic servant from the commedia dell'arte) was found in a dictionary and all present agreed to the new name.
During its first 40 years the club played at a total of 15 venues. Since 1909, they have only played at three.[citation needed]
In 1906, the club was invited by the Rugby Football Union to use the new national stadium in Twickenham. In those early days, only one or two internationals were played there during the season, and before long Twickenham became the headquarters of the Harlequin Football Club.
In 1961, Harlequins undertook a tour of East Africa in conjunction with Pretoria Harlequins from South Africa, as guests of the Kenya Harlequin F.C. and the Rugby Football Union of East Africa; the club won five and drew one. The tour is notable for two facts, it was the first time that three sister clubs of the Harlequin family all played each other in a coordinated series of matches and at 19 days it was the longest overseas tour undertaken by a British club up to that time. Despite this, the tour pales to insignificance when it is realised the Pretoria club spent four weeks in East Africa playing eight matches and another in Rhodesia on the way home.
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Harlequin F.C.
Harlequins (officially Harlequin Football Club) is a professional rugby union club that plays in the Gallagher PREM , the top level of English rugby union. Their home ground is the Twickenham Stoop, located in Twickenham, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
The club, which was founded in 1866 as "Hampstead Football Club", split the following year with some of the membership forming Wasps RFC. Three years later Hampstead renamed itself Harlequins and became one of the founding members of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. For more than a hundred years, Harlequins had been one of the top UK teams during the amateur era and this continued with the introduction of professionalism in 1995. The club has been champions of England twice, winning the title in 2012 and most recently in 2021. They won the European Challenge Cup in 2001, 2004 and 2011, the joint most wins of any team in the competition, and the domestic cup in 1988, 1991 and 2013. It remains the only founding club member of the RFU to still be in the top flight of English rugby.
Harlequins has the largest social media following of any club in the Premiership, the 2nd largest of any club in Europe, after Stade Toulousain.
The current club captain is Alex Dombrandt and head coach is Jason Gilmore for the 2025–26 season.
The Hampstead Football Club was founded in 1866 and the first recorded game took place in 1867. A disagreement between Club Secretary William Titchener and William Alford in 1867 resulted in Alford leaving with half of the membership to form the club now known as Wasps. The club was renamed Harlequin Rugby Football Club in 1870, supposedly because the membership was no longer purely local and to retain the previously created "HFC" monogram mark. The word 'Harlequin' (Arlecchino, a comic servant from the commedia dell'arte) was found in a dictionary and all present agreed to the new name.
During its first 40 years the club played at a total of 15 venues. Since 1909, they have only played at three.[citation needed]
In 1906, the club was invited by the Rugby Football Union to use the new national stadium in Twickenham. In those early days, only one or two internationals were played there during the season, and before long Twickenham became the headquarters of the Harlequin Football Club.
In 1961, Harlequins undertook a tour of East Africa in conjunction with Pretoria Harlequins from South Africa, as guests of the Kenya Harlequin F.C. and the Rugby Football Union of East Africa; the club won five and drew one. The tour is notable for two facts, it was the first time that three sister clubs of the Harlequin family all played each other in a coordinated series of matches and at 19 days it was the longest overseas tour undertaken by a British club up to that time. Despite this, the tour pales to insignificance when it is realised the Pretoria club spent four weeks in East Africa playing eight matches and another in Rhodesia on the way home.